Beautiful bitterness – Why UR Ananthamurthy’s writing is eternal

The passing of writer UR Ananthamurthy truly marks the end of an age – a time when to ‘write’ meant more than chronicling the gleaming plastic of malls.

It meant to lift the covers off many bitter truths society would rather hide. It meant to write words that would somehow, with beautiful bitterness, live forever – even amongst those who would rather not hear them.

Ananthamurthy did that with his path-breaking novel Samskara. I read this some years ago in translation but the power of the writing stays with me. Its dark mood and the imagery Samskara conjured up – a village steeped, swamp-like, in such deep caste oppression that murder and rape were overseen by the blink of an unseeing eye, the sweep of hands sheathed in ‘tradition’ – convinced me the story lost nothing in translation.

Few writers achieve this kind of impact.

Another kind of impact Ananthamurthy had was the furor his words created when he remarked he would rather leave than live in an India which had Narendra Modi as PM.

The acrid criticism, the frenzied shouting and hounding that followed are well known.

We heard little from Ananthamurthy since but this much was clear. As a writer, his gift of uncovering ugliness – in this case, the inability of many of us to even tolerate the right of an individual to have his own particular views – had not been dulled by fame or time.

It had been sharpened.

Today, reports suggest firecrackers were set off to mockingly ‘rejoice’ an occasion that would otherwise have been marked with deep respect.

But for those appalled, I’d suggest seeing this as a final indicator of just how powerful Ananthamurthy’s words were, how they had the ability to stay etched, like burning embers or discomfiting nails, in people’s minds long after he created them.

There are few other attributes a great writer could want.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Author

Srijana Mitra Das holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University, UK. She works on the Times of India's Editorial Page where she writes on political and cultural topics and manages the Q&A interview section. She is keenly interested in Bollywood cinema, literature, music (classical piano, rock and jazz), cuisine, consumption and lifestyles – and the oft-overlooked ties these have with deeper economic movements, wider political change.
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A strong believer in youth having its say, Srijana’s writing is humourous, ironic and for the intellectually-endowed – while being easy on the eye.

Srijana Mitra Das holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University, UK. She works on the Times of India's Editorial Page where she writes on pol. . .